The present invention relates generally to cordless telephone systems connected to a public or private switched telephone network, and more specifically to the reception of incoming calls from the telephone network to the wide area cordless telephone system.
The current wide area cordless telephone system for business applications serves divided business areas. It includes a radio control unit connected to a public or private switched telephone network and access units which are divided into groups corresponding to the business areas. The access units in each area are located at strategic points for establishing radio channels with cordless stations located in the same area as the access units. The radio control unit monitors the location of each cordless stations through the access units by storing the locations of the cordless stations and constantly updating the stored records in order to respond quickly to an originating call to or an incoming call, from the network.
With the current system, cordless stations are uniquely assigned address numbers. All incoming calls from the network are treated as an individual call directed only to one of the cordless stations which is addressed. Therefore, the absence of the addressed user may cause a delay in answering the call, and hence, a need arises to allow all incoming calls to be answered by any of the users of each business area.